Games We Play
by LucyRasmussen1
Summary: AU, where Nathan and Sarah still meet.
1. Doctors and Nurses

Title: Games We Play

Author: LucyRasmussen

Summary: An AU take on the events of "Sarah". Might be multi chapter to outline Sarah's time in Haven.

Rating: T, for sure, sexy things mentioned.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Notes: For ThatIsSoHaven, for being the best fangirl she can be. And because one of her Tumblr posts inspired this fic.

Doctors and Nurses

Even if things don't happen the way they do, he still meets Sarah.

Stuart Mosley has a panic attack in the middle of the Haven Mini Mart, while Duke happens to be in same aisle. When he and Audrey show up, Stuart sends him back too.

He wakes up in the parking lot of the Veteran's Hospital.

Before he has time to consider where he can find Duke, a security guard patrolling the parking lot finds him.

To avoid awkward questions, he pretends to be a new doctor who has been on a double shift. The security guard leers at him but seems to believe the lie. He steals a white coat off a random hanger and walks down the tiled hallway in search of a more convenient alibi.

He ducks into a random room when a group of nurses enter the hallway and he recognises her voice immediately. They're discussing something about the war and Kennedy and apparently finding it a hilarious subject.

The redhead on the left doesn't seem very interested in the conversation. She excuses herself to go check on a patient. The patient whose room he broke into.

She stops short when she sees the white coat, and eyes him curiously.

Not at all fazed, he asks her to check the temperature and blood pressure because the patient doesn't look very well. She does, much to her own (and the patients) surprise. While she does, she's next to him and he can feel a familiar warmth against his hand.

Then she pounces.

She grabs his ear while giving him a lecture on how Mr. Matheson had been checked for a fever 15 minutes before and how horrible a doctor he is for not reading the chart. They're standing on the steps outside by the time she's finished ranting.

He still tells her how amazing he thinks she is.

Oddly, this doesn't convince her.

Their conversation is stopped short by an ambulance arriving and people who, in the bustle of nurses and shouting don't stop to think about his medical abilities.

The patient, an obviously pregnant woman is laying on a stretcher making odd choking sounds. Her husband keeps talking about something she ate and how she collapsed right after. While not a doctor, he recognises anaphalaxia when he sees it. He grabs one of the pens in the breast pocket of the stolen doctor's coat and screws it apart to construct a make shift breathing tube. He tells Sarah to make an incision for it, and watches her closely as she does. He jams the pen into the incision and the choking sounds stop. The woman relaxes and her eyes become less stricken with fear.

The husband thanks him profusely, and she's watching him. She smiles.

Then he remembers he's supposed to find Duke. Like he expected, he finds him hanging out at the local dive bar making small talk with a dark haired man. Junior washes glasses and occasionally eavesdrops on their conversation. After a while, Nathan gets annoyed and wonders why people refer to a grown man as "Junior". When it turns out that Junior is in fact Roy Crocker, he allows Duke to diffuse the situation. Doesn't take much, really. Duke manages a more convenient fib about being a long lost second cousin and Nathan leaves them sharing a beer and telling family stories.

He returns to the hospital in the hopes of catching her again.

She's with her friends and he can't help but realise how uninterested she seems to be in them.

The chattering comes to an abrupt halt when they notice him, when she notices him.

So he steals her away from them.

To a beautiful beach, still warm from the sun. They eat sandwiches and drink beer.

She admires his bravery, she says. What he did for the pregnant woman earlier.

How she can't resist touching him.

Her hands travel up his arm, down his arm. Her fingers are on his cheek and in his hair.

They are interrupted by a car stopping nearby, so she takes him elsewhere.

Her room at the local motel is small, but neat and equipped with a double bed.

He watches as she strips out of the nurses uniform and how she maintains eye contact the whole time. When she's down to her slipdress and not much more he pulls her into his lap.

They kiss, ferocious and wanting. He's tried not to fantasize about this, really he did.

But on the list of ways it could be, this one ranks pretty high.

She looks at him and tells him she's not feeling well. That she's flushed and fevered and needs a check up. And since she's already half naked, would he do the honours?

The first „check up" is short and intense. It leaves them breathless and still wanting more.

The second time is longer, and more intimate. He makes sure to discover everything there is to know about her body. The way it bends and folds. What it feels like when he kisses certain parts. They reverse roles for the third time. She's experienced, so much more then he bargained for. Her knowledge of the human anatomy comes in handy as she tells him what she's doing and how his body should be reacting.

Later, when they are spent and she's dozing in his arms he admits he's not a real doctor. She giggles against his chest, making a strange vibration ripple across it.

Of course she knows, she tells him. She's more disappointed that he didn't just tell her he was a cop. She's never had a cop before, only random one nighters with a soldier she'd nursed back to health in Korea. They'd spent three hot sticky nights in a crummy motel in Seoul before he was sent back to his unit. A week later, word came back that he'd stepped on a mine and was killed instantly. After that, she'd decided she was done with love. Until today.

He kisses the top of her head, knowing that he won't be able to stay here in this moment with her forever either. Duke is probably wondering where he is, God knows what is happening back in the 21st century.

They sleep, and he's awoken by the sound of a car starting outside at 5 am.

The sun is peeking through the curtains, and for the first time in a long time he's able to relax. Really completely feel himself relax. She cuddles closer but doesn't wake up.

The second time he wakes, she's standing in the doorway to the bathroom wearing a dark blue kimono. She strokes the smooth fabric, while telling him about her soldier haggling for it with a Korean cloth merchant. He watches her, fascinated, as she walks into the bathroom and drops the robe to the floor.

He follows her as if in a trance. She's standing in front of the tub, waiting for his next move.

He asks if she's done this with her soldier, daring him like this.

She laughs and steps in.

The water is warm, soothing.

Three more hours, she tells him. Before she has to go back to work.

So they bathe, and he enjoys the feel of her body moving against his. Oddly, he can feel the temperature of the water inbetween them, and the way it splashes against his skin.

In their last moments, he watches her dress and do her hair. The urge to undo all of it is strong, because she's acting slow and deliberate and he knows that look in her eyes.

He tells her about the Troubles, that she's special. That she's here to help.

He tells her to find Vince and Dave.

While she's checking her appearance in the floor length mirror, he wraps his arms around her while telling her that he can not stay. But that he'll always know her, regardless of how much time passes. She makes him promise.

He walks her back to the hospital, where Duke is impatiently waiting at the entrance. He's found Stuart, and all he really wants is for Sarah to fix him so he can get back to his life and his restaurant.

He kisses her goodbye, and it feels so ordinary he thinks he won't ever be able to resist doing the same with Audrey. He brushes her stomach with his fingers, and then the room starts to spin.

The last thing he sees is her eyes. Beautiful and daring and blue.

He can't wait to see them again. Maybe sometime soon.

_ Be kind, review on your way out._


	2. Nurses and Reporters

Title: Games We Play

Author: LucyRasmussen

Summary: An AU take on the events of "Sarah". Might be multi chapter to outline Sarah's time in Haven.

Rating: T, sexy things mentioned.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

2. Nurses and Reporters

_James, that's what his name was._

_Came in on a Sunday morning caked in blood and mud and the will to live._

_Slept a lot at first. She spent a lot of those first few days washing him down. The mud really got everywhere._

She's making her rounds one morning when she spies them. They are standing in the hallway, whispering angry words at one other.

She watches them for a while to see what they'd do.

They enter the hospital room and there's a strange hissing sound. Then she smells the awful putrid scent of burned skin.

After they leave, she checks the patient and finds a fresh burn mark on the inside of his wrist. It's red and brown and distinctive. Circular lines, little figures. Arms around her.

The world spins and then there's only the dark.

_James Weller, lieutenant of whatever division._

_He woke up after a week, with her standing over him. _

It's strange being the patient.

She ponders as she looks up at the white tiled ceiling.

Then she feels it.

A tiny flutter just under her navel.

No, no, no.

_James Weller, lieutenant of whatever division, started to slowly come back to life under her auspices._

_She'd take him for walks around the camp._

_Sometimes he'd sit and stare and sometimes he'd chatter until his voice was hoarse._

_James Weller, lieutenant of whatever division, but Jim to her._

When she wakes up the second time, there's a visitor.

He comes into focus just enough for her to recognise the taller, lankier journalist.

He brought her grapes and flowers.

Tells her he's sorry, but that they did what was needed. That she was special enough to understand, even if not right now.

She doesn't feel special. She still feels the flutter deep down.

_Jim got better every day. _

_One she walked into the barracks finding him writing a letter._

_When she's standing in front of the cot, he eagerly holds out the letter to her._

_"To Sarah, sorry 'bout the mud. I always hate seeing a pretty face get dirty."_

_It makes her blush and she shoves the letter into her pocket before legging it away._

She's allowed to leave the hospital the same day, and to her surprise finds the stranger waiting for her again. He holds out his arm and without thinking why, she takes it.

He takes her to her hotel room on the edge of town.

"Vince Teagues, come find me at the Herald."

She wonders why Nathan would want her to seek out such strange men.

_Jim stayed for five weeks. Two weeks for the mud and blood leave his body, three to recover enough to be sent back at moments' notice._

_Only he wasn't the type to easily surrender._

The Herald office is located smack in the middle of town.

She hesitates at the door for a moment. The card Nathan left in her coat pocket is nearly crumpled in her hand. A little longer and it'll turn liquid.

The bell above the door clangs and both men jump up at the sight of her.

"I'm here, now tell me".

_Seoul was hot and broody._

_Mostly she remembers dirty children playing in the mud and begging for food and coins._

_She could hear them, always. Even when she lay awake in the middle of the night and their little voices would travel up high through the open window._

_If Jim was sound asleep, she'd sit on the window sill and watch them play tag and hide and seek in the alley._

It takes her a month before she moves into the empty apartment above the Herald office.

She makes it a safe little nest, where the brothers often come up for a late lunch or dinner. Sometimes she goes down to drink middle of the day cocktails and a game of chess.

It takes her two months to realise that the flutter hadn't gone away.

_They gave the nurses pills._

_Big greenish pills that were supposed to prevent pregnancies. She's never been convinced that nature can be over overridden by pharmaceuticals but she takes them anyway._

_She has her wicked way with her soldier and nothing comes of it._

_When he's sent back to his unit, and killed soon after she's not sure if she's supposed to be sad or relieved that nothing was left behind._

Three months later, after another morning where she's done nothing but throw up everything she's ever eaten, Vince takes her to see Dr. Carr.

In the parking lot, he shows her a ring. A beautiful golden wedding ring with a diamond block inlay.

For pretend, he tells her. Because Vince, being the reporter that he is, has the uncanny ability to see straight through her.

He puts a similar ring on his own finger and walks around to open the car door for her.

_Be kind, review on the way out._


End file.
